Shanelle Sorensen

10 Bookish Facts About Me

Normally, posts will go up every Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, but during this first week, I’m putting up a few extras! Check back on Sunday for the next post.

Today’s post is based on a round of YouTube videos I’ve seen, and it looked like a fun way to continue my introduction-by-way-of-books, so here we go!

My mom taught me how to read when I was two and three years old.

When pressed, I will generally cite The Book Thief as my single favorite book, but I have a bulky list of all-time favorites that I would much rather recite.

While reading, I have snorted or cried in the following places: my room at 3:00 a.m., public transit, the library, classrooms (waiting for class to start), and…work. In my cubicle. Yup.

I was introduced to “the writing process” one day in school, came home, started writing a story, and never looked back. I have loved writing ever since.

Most of the first stories I wrote were what should really be classified as Dear America fan fiction. I was completely obsessed with all of the Dear America books from age 7 to 13.

The Dear America series was responsible for my absolute obsession with historical fiction and history for most of my childhood/adolescence.

My earliest story that was NOT a ripoff of Dear America was alternate historical fiction about the Chinese invading Texas. This was because my class once had six weeks of Spanish instruction, and six weeks of Chinese instruction, and I wanted to write a story where I could “sneak” in all of the phrases I had learned. I thought it was super cool.

I basically lived in my school library in middle school. I think I went almost every day and made my way through an awful lot of books over the course of those three years.

I was introduced to the Harry Potter series by my fifth grade teacher, who read the first book to us out loud in class. I was immediately hooked.

I mentioned this in my previous post, but one of the only times I ever got in trouble at school was for reading a book while my teacher was instructing the class…about reading. She was very upset. My mom just thought it was funny.